Too Many Apples

She was livid.

I had not cleared her daughter to play sports due to a significantly elevated heart rate and had referred her to a cardiologist for an evaluation. She understood that decision but when I went back in the chart and saw that the heart rate was also elevated at a visit a year earlier, understanding evaporated. She lost it.

“How could that happen?” she demanded. I did not have an answer. We should have caught it. It was an inexcusable mistake. Even though I subsequently made a change in the way we documented vital signs to make sure it could never happen again, the family left my practice. The mom wondered if there were other things we had missed. Trust had been lost.

I thought of this story this week as I considered the sad case of George Floyd. I found myself asking the same question. “How could this happen?” As did the mom, I wondered how many other things had been missed, how many other times police misconduct had gone unrecorded and thus unknown. I felt myself losing trust in the police.

Trust it seems, is the foundation of a society. All social contracts have trust at their core. When we go through a green light, we do so with confidence, trusting others to stop on red. We drop our children off at school, trusting that they will be not only educated but protected. When we say, “I do,” we trust the one we love to keep their promises and their vows. Without trust, everything falls apart.

I find myself wondering how many cases of abuse at the hands of police people can endure before trust is completely lost. We can say that bad apples are rare, and they are. But they are still there. Something has to be done to remove them.

Bart

"Why God?"

I sat on the edge of the bed, helpless. Lisa sat beside be sobbing, her body shaking uncontrollably as the grief consumed her. I sat beside her, my arms around her, unable to speak. One question repeated itself inside my head. “Why God? Why?”

From the moment we married, we knew we wanted a family. We didn’t want to wait long but rationally reasoned that we should wait until I finished medical school to try and have children. Rationality lasted through two years of studies, then desire won out and Lisa stopped birth control. We couldn’t wait to have kids. While we couldn’t wait God had other plans.

Months  and then a year went by without a pregnancy. Lisa went to her Ob-Gyn for help and the standard tests were ordered. Everything came back normal, no explanation was found. Her doctor prescribed Clomid, a medication to make sure she ovulated at a specific time. All it did was make her moody. We were fearful and frustrated.

Then one night late in my third year of medical school as we were preparing for bed she said, “I have pimples all over my body!” I took a look, and although my medical education was not complete I knew what I was seeing. She had chickenpox.

She was also two days late for her period. We had reached the point in our infertility journey where we had quit talking about her cycles. The roller coaster ride of hope followed by despair when she started a period was too much to bear each month. We told ourselves that we would not even talk about it until she was at least four days late. The chicken pox changed our protocol. I went to the store and got a test. It was positive. Now what?

Our excitement at conceiving was tempered with fear of what chickenpox might due to a developing child. I went to the hospital that morning with my thoughts whirling. I told my supervising doctor what was going on and her response was “You’ll have to abort!” (She was a surgeon who had no idea what she was talking about.)

While I was at the hospital Lisa found that month’s issue of American Family Physician on my shelf. The cover article was “Congenital Chickenpox”. She read in great detail about all of the birth defects that might afflict our child, including being born with missing limbs. The risk was “only” 3%, but 3 seemed like a huge number to us It was a stressful time. When we had an ultrasound 4 months later and saw that our baby had all of his fingers and toes we rejoiced.

After Nate was born we decided to never use birth control again. We did not want to limit our chances. Three years went by without conception. We visited an Ob-Gyn who started clomid again. We were surprised and excited a few months later when we learned she was pregnant. We were so happy we told everyone. Just a few weeks later we had to go back to everyone with the bad news that she miscarried. We were disappointed but were still hopeful. Miscarriages happen, and we were confident that it was just a matter of time.

6 months later she was pregnant again. It seemed so perfect. I had finished residency and we had moved to Huntington Beach. We finally had the time to be active in church. We both taught Sunday school, I was attending a men’s Bible study and Lisa was in a women’s group. The pregnancy felt like a confirmation that God had noticed our faithfulness. Our hopes and our confidence were sky high.

They crashed down a few weeks later when she started to have some spotting. An ultrasound revealed there was no heartbeat. We were devastated. We had been so faithful. We were so sure this was a blessing from Godand had allowed ourselves let down our guard. We came home, sat on our bed and wept.

“Why God, why?”

It is the question that is asked so often by so many in the midst of tragedy, a question that for so many is a barrier to faith. If God is so good, why do so many bad things happen?

This Wednesday night at 7 PM, some of my Christian friends who have experienced great loss will join me in online zoom meeting to wrestle with this question. I welcome you to join us. www.zoom.com, meeting ID 559 982 199.

Bart